Postini Extends Content Policy Management

By Greg McNevin

November 15, 2007: The on-demand security firm Postini, recently acquired by Google, has announced new content policy management capabilities for Google Apps, increasing the security and compliance capabilities for the online application suite.

Specifically, the new features have been added to the company’s Email Security service, enabling protection for social security and credit card numbers, as well as providing content analysis and policy administration tools for email administrators.

Dubbed Advanced Content Policy Management, Postini says the new release adds three significant enhancements. The first is lexical data analysis for securing credit card and social security numbers in emails and attachments. Policies on this front can be enforced automatically, with the pertinent data encrypted or blocked.

Next administrators can create advanced policy rules based on text patterns using regular expression syntax, and apply a variety of dispositions including blocking, sending a carbon copy to supervisors, or quarantine.

Thirdly with content-based message analysis and reporting, Postini says administrators are given insight into content entering and leaving the organisation. It claims policy violations can be addressed in great detail and with company specific or regulatory requirements in mind.The new content policy management framework is available as both a part of Postini’s standalone service, and as part of Google Apps Premier Edition. “Companies of all sizes are seeking to reduce email security and compliance risk” said Scott Petry, founder of Postini and director of product management at Google, “They are seeking to encrypt email communications automatically based on message content, prevent sensitive content from leaving the company via email and have visibility into policy violations. Postini’s innovation in content analysis and disposition simplifies the process of managing communications compliance policies.”Postini also announced significant new functionality for Email Security and Message Archiving services, and claims that further extensions to content policy management are expected in the future, as are additional communication protocols, including Instant Messaging and HTTP.

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